According to rebels, the bodies of the dead passengers from Malaysian flight MH17 were loaded onto the refrigerated train (Image: Maxim Zmeyev/Reuters)

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THE remains of the tragic victims of Flight MH17 lay in train carriages last night as the war of words over the atrocity escalated.

Pro-Russian rebels in Ukraine moved the corpses on to four refrigerated carriages over the weekend – and are refusing to release them for burial.

The grim carriages were transferred to the rebel-held town of Torez nine miles from the crash site.

At the same time, the black box flight recorders from the Malaysian Airlines jet were seized by the rebels.

And Ukrainian security services released tapes they said showed the Kremlin and the rebels were involved in a cynical cover-up of evidence pointing to their guilt over the crash.

In the aftermath of the crash, the rebels refused to allow officials from the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) to carry out an independent ­examination of the area.

In the rebel stronghold of Donetsk, leader Alexander Borodai said the bodies recovered from the crash site would remain in the carriages until the arrival of an international aviation delegation.

“The bodies will go nowhere until experts arrive,” Borodai said.

There was no word on the bodies of the remaining plane victims. But OSCE spokesman Michael Bociurkiw said it was likely some had been incinerated without a trace.

Borodai also claimed that the plane’s black boxes would be handed over to the International Civil Aviation Organisation.

Borodai said: “Some items, presumably the black boxes, were found and have been delivered to Donetsk.

“They are under our control. There are no specialists among us who could pinpoint the look of the black boxes but we brought some technical items which could be the black boxes of the airliner.”

He said he was expecting a team of 12 Malaysian experts and was disappointed at how long they had taken to arrive.

But Ukraine’s Security Council spokesman Andriy Lysenko said: “The ­terrorists are doing ­everything to hide the evidence of the involvement of Russian missiles in the shooting down of that airliner.”

The Ukrainian authorities released details of what they claimed to be a recording of a phone call on Friday – the day after the crash – between a senior rebel commander and his men discussing black boxes.

On the tape, Vostok battalion chief Oleksandr Khodakovsky tells one fighter the items must be brought under their control – on Kremlin orders.

He says: “I have a request for you. It is not my request. Our friends from high above are very much interested in the fate of the black boxes. I mean people from Moscow.”

Security sources suspect Russian ­intelligence wanted to make sure they had extracted all information from the flight recorders before the OSCE could find them.

In London, David Cameron revealed he had spoken to Vladimir Putin for the first time since the disaster in what officials described as a “frank” conversation – diplomatic speak for a blazing row.